Completely tongue in cheek here people! ...

1. CEO

2. Lawyer

3. Media (TV/Radio)

4. Salesperson

5. Surgeon

6. Journalist

7. Police officer

8. Clergyperson

9. Chef

10. Civil Servant

I'm a bit of a psychopath myself and I�ve never even thought of pursuing any of those fields! I�ve met a couple of �interesting� CEO�s in my time though.

Source: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/fea...n-revealed.html

i don't think that word means what you think it means

One of the key traits of psychopaths is dishonesty. "Everything I say is a lie. I am a liar". So you saying that you are a bit of a psychopath leaves ...

And why would you say that as a bit of a brag ?

Call girl/Lady of the night/Hooker/Escort

What is it with chefs? I must've read a lot of lists about jobs and criminal behavior where chef came up.

BTW the article says, "These jobs attract psychopaths." I beg to differ, turn the tables so to speak...

I think these are jobs psychopaths are most comfortable with.

Not politician?

IMO Politics/Politician is the pinnacle of psychopathic success. The reason being is because unlike those on the list it is the only job where people, the masses, the media, literally everyone, is afraid to label you a psychopath. That is the reason why it is not on the list.

TBH



I was trying my best to imitate these skills in real life. My recent experience convinced me that people who have these characteristics are the most successful people.

Unfortunately, I lost interest and respect for the society. So, the pursuit of success, riches etc. went out the window. Admittedly, I failed to imitate the skills above so I'm a loser in any case and will not succeed in any society.

Further additions:
IMO the society's hypocrisy is something to be admired. For example, psychopaths are characterized by callousness. The problem is that supposedly, most people feel guilty causing others harm. So a psychopath's callousness enables him/her to cause harm without feeling anything.

The truth is, most people enjoy harming others. However we have put these rules that it is unacceptable.

For example, someone does a horrible thing and is caught on video. Video goes viral and the perpetrator gets death threats all over. People in the society gang up on him/her to cause harm. Everyone actually enjoys this because they have the excuse to harm someone in the name of justice.

This is more prevalent with my recent observation of youths from different cultures. You give people the "justice"/"in the name of good" cause and they will be capable of doing all manners of atrocities to others. Most youths on the other hand don't need the "just cause" they only need the "popular/cool" motivation. A girl is uncool and a football team rapes her, they video it and proudly announce the things they did to her.

The only difference is that the psychopath didn't bother with the "in the name of justice"/"socially acceptable" crap and just went straight for it.

However in my eyes they're all the same.

/end rant

You missed the most obvious one:

mine.

If Bath Iron Works is any indication ship building should be pretty high up on that list.

Politicians are CEOs and lawyers and civil servants, so that's taken care by all the entry level professions.

Well, as I understand it, it can be quite ruthless and cutthroat to be a successful chef at renowned restaurants, so there's a lot of prestige and authority attached to it.

That's the sort of thing that they like which gives them a rush. And they tend to rather give the the orders rather than take them.

If a personality combines an inability to relate to others, but the whole universe relates to that personality, that by definition creates a narcissist, which is what psychopaths are- an extreme form of narcissist. Only, the successful, intelligent ones learn to hide that, because that will be detected.

Psychopathy is really a spectrum- everyone has some traits of psychopathy from time to time, but as you go along this spectrum

narcissism-------------------------> extreme narcissism

it becomes more and more psychopathic.

What's key about that is that the intelligent ones are so good at hiding that, and they aren't per se sociopathic. An intelligent, well socialized psychopath would rather be CEO of a bank rather than rob one.

So, it does not benefit psychopaths to brag that's what they are (in fact, a lot of them really don't realize that's what they are- they think that's how the world is supposed to work and that they are better at it).

A sociopath on the other hand might often brag that's what he is, a sociopathic is not per se a psychopath. A sociopath is still capable of more self reflection and actually feel guilt about what they do. A movie that shows the difference well is Reservoir Dogs- Mr. White would be a sociopath, Mr. Blonde is a psychopath.

There's discussions that they are an evolutionary kind of offshoot, because in a world that works the way it does, that sort of person could be quite successful. These kinds of persons are capable of looking out for number one and deceiving and manipulating others into believing that's not what they're doing.

From an early age, psychopaths begin to realize there's something different about them- like their pets die and they don't really care the way others seem to. So they realize there's something off about themselves, but don't know what it is. This is a turning point, and that's when they make the decision that they have to do something to blend in with society.

So rather than feeling them naturally, they learn emotions by watching others, and they basically mimic what they see to pass among society- it's called cognitive empathy, they only understand a thing by what they see and associate it with what they have learned and come to know about it, but without actually feeling it. Psychopaths often say they never really felt as though they were in their own bodies.

So psychopaths really don't have personalities, they have personas. They just have masks that they wear and change for the moment, what's underneath that is not much more than a serious amount of rage and contempt for everything, which they learn to mask. And they can be very good at that.

But in the long run, it can very self destructive, because these can be the types of people who see an opportunity for self advancement, but that calculation could destruct a company or a country or something, so this evolutionary advantage is actually more short term for the individual, it only buys time for them rather than produces meaningful benefit for everyone.

And in that respect, we can learn from them, it's almost as if they are a different species branching off from humanity, and it's nature's way of teaching us about ourselves, and giving us the tools to beat them, because if we don't, society will become increasingly more infected and become like this. Whomever comes out on top of this will steer the course of our species, it could be argued it's a test to pass, it's part of the evolutionary adaptation of our species to overcome it.

In science fiction, the sentient, intelligent, psychopathic robot is a familiar device. A psychopath in the purest sense, when alone with its own thoughts and not around others, and without the need to wear a mask, a human psychopath would think like this:

There was a study about CEOs and other management types a few years ago.

The study reported that 25% of people in high positions in companies showed psychopathic traits.

One doctor who has been scanning psychopathic brains actually was told by his family to scan his own and came up with the same imaging that the test subjects were showing.

It was kind of interesting seeing his take on how his family described his actions etc..

Many go into areas of psychology. They're more interested in figuring themselves out than others being the problem with that. You can't counsel yourself.

Having been sick for a while now, I think a lot of doctors are psychopaths. I don't think they care about healing you. I think they see you as a piece of meat that they can make money off of. They don't care about the physical, financial, emotional, or psychological pain they put you and your family through. Hippocratic oath, my a$$.

" So rather than feeling them naturally, they learn emotions by watching others, and they basically mimic what they see to pass among society- it's called cognitive empathy, they only understand a thing by what they see and associate it with what they have learned and come to know about it, but without actually feeling it. Psychopaths often say they never really felt as though they were in their own bodies."

That could also describe some people on the autism scale.

Psychiatry is a natural magnet for psychopaths. They really look at human beings as subjects of study, because their actions are so bizarre to them, and the field of psychology gives them the experimental and theoretical tools to understand what they're looking at- this behavior that is so alien to them that they can study in a clinical way. It's an interesting thing to think of it this way- which are the aliens, the normal individuals or the psychopaths?

Because if psychopathy can be an advantage, to coldly calculate all actions in just the most self serving way, they look at it this way: to do anything else is foolish, the world does not work that way. In fact, they'll say look at all the damage an emotional species such as ourselves have inflicted and are capable of inflicting, only we pretend to overlook this in ourselves or something- and that's a good point. If psychopaths are manipulators and liars and schemers, it's something we teach them how to do, they're watching what works on us. They are a strange mirror reflection of us in that sense, so we do have something to learn from them.

We should also not get into the habit of diagnosing everyone as a psychopath, that's easy to do- since we all have basic traits from time to time that will look psychopathic. It's just that normal people score lower on the scale, or are moderated and regulated.

There's a lot of psychopaths around- in some estimates, as high as 1 in 25 (in America), the kind of criminal, violent psychopath is about 1 percent of the population- still, that's millions of people.

Everyone here has encountered them, you likely encounter them everyday without knowing it. If you've ever gotten an off feeling about someone, you can't put your finger on it, that might be it- your right brain intuition is reading something off in person's subtle mannerisms. Very good psychopaths might pass by detection, but some of the more fledgling ones might have something off with their eyes, or their smiles don't seem to match up with their facial expressions (because these are not natural for them, they are only mimics, and it can come off artificial- subtle, but capable of being detected).

Well, because autistic and things like Asperger's seem to have some problems with displaying empathy, but there is still difference. Those individuals aren't pathological. I might have a heart attack, and the autistic individual doesn't seem to register it happening (although they might sense something is wrong, they don't know how to express it). Whereas the psychopath sees an opportunity- does he wait for me to die and go through my wallet, or does he save me because it benefits him somehow- maybe a reward, or I can help him later because I have specific skills, or because he wants to fool others into thinking he's a good guy. Or it could be his socialization- he'll save me but without feelings involved, it's just what he's programmed to do without feeling like a machine.

"Showing (some) psychopathic traits" and being rightfully diagnosed as "a psychopath" are different pairs of shoes. A surgeon who cannot make a mental disconnect between the person he met before, and the patient (=the job) on the table later on is probably a very poor doctor. But that doesn't mean that surgeons are violent and manipulative in times when they are not cutting up people and sewing them back together.

Similar arguments can be brought forward for most other jobs when lives are on the line, and even politicians can sometimes bear that burden if they make it to the top. Usually their actions are judged by historians by the outcome, which is a bit of a logical fallacy. In times of crisis there probably are no options that are obviously low risk (otherwise it wouldn't be a crisis in the first place). But sometimes you simply need leaders that are willing to take risks because not acting is a decision of its own and may also lead to negative consequences.
That's not to say that taking big risks is always a good idea. But the question is, why are our societies designed to allow imbalanced risk-taking where the consequences of risky decisions that fail are born by other people than those who took the risk. Psychopathic traits would become less of an issue if there was no disconnect of responsibilities.

Anyway, characterizing people in all these jobs as psychopaths may be an interesting way to start a conversation (or to bait clicks), but I think it's not really helpful to produce deep insights. Back in the day we simply called these people "ruthless" rather than stigmatizing them as a danger to society.